Why isn't the moon called Luna?
- Thread starter Artume
- Start date
That's kinda my point. Just English and other Germanic languages use moon (and variations thereof). The game is so far in the future that I feel we would be going more by Latin names than English ones. It feels a bit antiquate/pompous to still use Moon. I get that the game is localised. But we call our sun Sol, so I figured Luna or Selene would eventually be adopted too.
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M...O...O...N that's how you spell Luna
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Why care about Sol? Because its not in line with the other planet names? You make a fair point though. I mean, not even the stars are labeled cohesively. I notice many use the Bayer designation, but not for others. Thinking of it now, I guess I would be happy with using the astronomical names everyone uses. Mercurious and Mercury are so close its basically a localization issue; that doesn't bother me. But my argument for Luna is based that we use Lunar (or Selenic) as the adjective for virtually everything related to the moon, and every Latin language uses Luna/Lune as well. This isn't about spelling or modern pronunciations, its that its a different word.
A small planetary satellite gravitationally bound to it's primary is called a moon. That's the general noun for it in English.
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and as such gets a capitalised proper noun. This is by almost universal acceptance in the world.
If you want to call it Luna, Selene, Ré, Chang'e, or even Frank then go ahead.
Imagine if the Moon was called Frank.
"Mars has 2 franks"
"The Galilean franks of Jupiter"
"Enceladus is an icy frank of Saturn"
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and as such gets a capitalised proper noun. This is by almost universal acceptance in the world.
If you want to call it Luna, Selene, Ré, Chang'e, or even Frank then go ahead.
Imagine if the Moon was called Frank.
"Mars has 2 franks"
"The Galilean franks of Jupiter"
"Enceladus is an icy frank of Saturn"
i'm spanish, and Luna and Sol, are just common nouns transformed to proper nouns capitalizing the first letter.. but as the English language, another planets have many "lunas" and other galaxies have several "soles"
So still i'm curious why in the game they preffered to adopt the latin version of their names,,, even if i admit i like it.
and.... why Earth is not "Tierra"??
So still i'm curious why in the game they preffered to adopt the latin version of their names,,, even if i admit i like it.
and.... why Earth is not "Tierra"??
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Thanks Copernicus.
If I had to guess, I would say it might have to do with astronomers never really saying "suns". They always say stars....at least that I've seen. Which is why I asked this question in the first place. If we call our star The Sun or Sol, why don't we call our moon by a proper name? Because, at least in my mind, The Sun is the name of our star. I refrain from calling it "our sun" and instead say "our star".
Its just interesting that the moon has the most variation. http://nineplanets.org/days.html The poster before you is delusional. Every planet OTHER than Earth/Moon has the same name in nearly every language, save for regional spellings and such. Sol and Sun are about 50/50 across the world. Earth is a bit of a mess but has a nice handful of Terras and a couple "Erds". But Moon is all over the place. There a nice chunk of Lunas, a bunch of Moon/Mon/Mans, and a handful of Chandras, plus a mess of unrelated ones. If there's one celestial body that has the most contention of the name, its the Moon.
It should be called Luna, and Earth should be called Terra. But my psychiatrist told me I shouldn't get too bothered by things that aren't the way they should.
Well is it called terra or earth is the Star called Sun or Sol? because that would dictate the conistency which is already so broken that it doesn't matters at all anymore.
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Nothing stops us from calling the Moon Luna. Everyone knows what you're talking about when you say Luna. They don't go, "well WHICH Luna??" ...unless there's a chick named Luna in which case that's different. But the point is people know when it comes to heavenly bodies Luna is the Moon and the Moon is Luna. Every world has different names, to go with the different languages spoken upon it. Every world also has sterile designations, like how Earth would be Sol C and Luna would be Sol C 1, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe I'm mistaken. I just took an ambien and I need to sleep.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
That was my point, I don't like the inconsistency. In English it's Sun, Moon, Earth. Which works. In Latin it would be Sol, Luna, Terra. In Greek it would be Helios, Selene, Gaia. Why mix them? Everything else is English in the English localisation, so following these names - http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Planets makes the most sense. The Moon is correct, but Sol isn't.
When we get the Latin Localisation by all means use the Latin. In the Romance Language localisations use their preferred name.
I'll stop now.
When we get the Latin Localisation by all means use the Latin. In the Romance Language localisations use their preferred name.
I'll stop now.
You have discovered that English is not just a living language but a thriving language, and part of that means that it not only borrows from all sorts of other languages, living, dead, and invented from nothing, but incorporates them into use however it sees convenient at the time. No word is casually thrown out. Better to swell the dictionary by a factor of ten than to discard one very uncommonly spoken word, because those are the gems that make a speaker sound smart at dinner parties.
The fault is our language, sir.
The fault is our language, sir.
Bah. Any name that starts with "The", I'm not buying into.
Except for The The.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
So, Bertha it is. Or maybe Aaskljdfhaskljh. Who knows?
It's the Moon in English. You calling France 'Egbert' won't change its name. It's 'France' in English.